Resources for Daily Worship
I hope I’ll have a few minutes this week to talk about how adding Square Time(as named by 4 year old Drummer Boy) to jumpstart our day has given us fuel for the day.
Right now the family who inspired us toward this change in our day is hosting a contest to win the ebook so that you can read all about it for yourself. Particularly if you have more than one child, I highly recommend entering the contest and if you don’t win, go ahead and buy the very reasonably priced ebook.
For today I want to share a few resources for the Worship and Bible portion of our Square Time.
Worship
I can’t carry a tune or play an instrument, and although I have led us through some songs we’ve really enjoyed the videos available on youtube, words included, to bring a joyful noise to our worship time. The words help the readers and the pictures help the 4 year old track with us. A few examples:
There are also many audio links and lyrics for popular children’s bible songs, here.
Scripture Memory
This weekend I discovered Seeds, a band who combines God’s word with hip, quality music. I bought two of their 4 cds, each cd package contains a complete cd for yourself and a complete cd to give away!
We’ll be listening to a verse a week(in addition to playing the whole cd in the car), learning one verse before moving to the next. Their website contains a verse checklist and verse memory cards to coordinate with the cd’s.
Even more exciting you can start listening to their music right now, here.
Memorizing the Books of the Bible
Each day they ask to listen to this song again and again. We’ve learned the first ten books in the last week. It’s addicting.
When we start the next five books I have my writers copy the names into their Square Time notebook.
Studying the Word
- Leading Little Ones to God: A Child’s Book of Bible Teachings by Marian M. Schoolland
- The Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos
- Read Aloud Bible Stories Vol. 1 by Ella K. Lindvall
- The Jesus Storybook Bible
- My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt
(If you have a wide variety of ages, let your older children know that sometimes you’ll be reading Bible books directed toward their younger siblings and sometimes at their level. We are re-reading Leading Little Ones to God, my 7 and 9 year old are looking up the Bible passages reading them aloud to us. I also ask them to listen for something that is new to this time.)
Prayer
I tried to teach this prayer to my girls when they were 3 and 4 and we just didn’t stick with it. But we started again and it’s really brought about the sweetest part of our time in the morning.
Mookie “Mommy before we start can I tell you something? The other day when Jellybean and I were fighting I didn’t tell her but I prayed that God would soften my heart and her heart and we stopped fighting, God answered my prayer!” And we all praised God.
Don’t force your kids to pray this way. Some mornings my kids have moaned and groaned and then joined in later as we go down the prayer, “Lord, I confess I didn’t want to pray when we started.” Oh, my heart.
Basically we take each letter and go around in a circle(or square) saying one or two things aloud related to it, and continue to the next letter.
A-Adoration(You’re great!)
C-Confession(I’ve sinned, I’m sorry)
T-Thanksgiving(Thank you for answering my prayer)
S-Supplication(God supplies all we need, “Lord please help Grandad get out of the hospital”)
Here are a few more places to read about it:
http://teachingthem.com/2008/10/03/acts-prayers-for-kids/
http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/19359/2957/4
http://withthekids.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/exploring-prayer-acts/
Everytime we go back to putting our Bible and Prayer time first, no matter whether it goes smoothly or not, all of our hearts are softer, ripe for learning, filled up with our Daily Bread. Which is more important, that your child know how to label pronouns and verbs, or that your child knows how to spend time with the Lord?
Late Start Christmas Idea
You might be like me.
You might be a little late wrapping your head around Christmas this year. You might be like me and have all the intentions in the world to create a meaningful, non-worldly celebration of Christ’s birthday this year, but for one reason or another you’re still trying to figure out the daily tasks like getting dinner made. You might be like me and enjoy all things creative and get overwhelmed by all your brilliant ideas and procrastinate picking one or two and now it’s December 11th.
Last week I wrote about our daily advent of unwrapping christmas books. After a few days I realized that book time had become much more exciting then reading the Word.
Here’s an idea that we started just a few days ago. Luke has 24 chapters, perfect for Advent(if it were December 1st), so a few days ago I handed out some blank books that I picked up a while back and a special set of sketching pencils. I told the kids that I was going to read a chapter from Luke and they could draw pictures from the story as I read. At the end of the month, I told them, you’ll have your own book of the Christmas story. Each morning since we’ve started, when I’ve announced it’s Bible time, there have been shouts of “Yeaaa”!
Mookie, age 9
Jellybean, age 7
Drummer Boy, age 4 1/2
To make this idea work for you:
- Luke tells the story beyond the birth of Jesus. You might look at the other gospels and pick one that tells the early Christmas events in more detail. Pick 12 chapters to finish off the days until Christmas.
- This activity will be more exciting if you give your children some specials supplies they only use for this activity. If you don’t have blank books, make one with construction paper, blank printer paper, and staples or yarn. Consider a new pack of crayons, pencils, markers, or sketch pencil.
- If you’re doing this with younger children, allow them freedom of imagination. In our Drummer Boy’s Christmas Story, there are pirates and a computer. But he is listening to the story and gaining confidence in his drawing skills.
- Stop once or twice during your reading and ask a child to narrate back what’s happened so far.
- My kids drew large, two page pictures and then realized a few days later that their pages would be used up before we read all of the chapters. You might let your children now how many days they’ll be drawing so they can divide up their book.
Let me know if you give it a try at your house.